In the centuries that followed the discovery of America,
European expansion into the Western Hemisphere reached a
scale that changed the world. The voyages to the New World
undertaken by the Atlantic powers of Europe in the 16th and
17th centuries are generally well known, as are the
explorations and settlement of Europeans in North America
during the 18th and 19th centuries. Less well known,
however, is the penetration of America’s northwest coast by
the Russians, the culmination of Russia’s age-old effort to
settle and develop its eastern frontier.

Russia’s eastward expansion took on a new dimension
in the 17th and 18th centuries, as a counterpart to European
and American westward expansion. About the same time that
English colonists first settled along the Atlantic seaboard,
Russian explorers, trappers, and settlers pushed east into
Siberia and in 1639 reached the Pacific Ocean. By the
mid-17th century frontier promyshlenniki—self employed and
contract entrepreneurs—had sailed through the strait
that separates Asia from North America, inadvertently
discovering a sea route from the Arctic to the Pacific.

But it was not until almost 75 years later, when
Tsar Peter the Great became determined to define the
geography of the North Pacific, that the potential value of
the discoveries in this region became clear. In two arduous
voyages, Vitus Bering
and Alexei Chirikov, under commission of the Russian Crown,
sailed through the area now called the Bering Strait in
1728, and in 1741 discovered the Aleutian Islands and the
mainland of Alaska, both of which they claimed for Russia.
These results aroused great interest among Russian hunters
and traders; the fur trade had long been the mainspring of
Russia’s eastward expansion, and now these frontier
entrepreneurs were drawn to the herds of fur seal and sea
otter that lived in the North Pacific.

From the 1740s to the
end of the century, over forty Russian merchants and
companies sponsored voyages to the Aleutians and the Alaskan
mainland. By the early 1800s, Russian entrepreneurs were
exporting an average of 62,000 fur pelts from North America
each year, worth roughly two-thirds of a million paper
rubles (about $133,200), a large sum in those days. Even
though over eighty percent of the pelts were fur seal, the
nearly five percent that were sea otter pelts were the most
valuable.

The rapid growth of the fur trade called for
permanent Russian posts in Alaska as well as bases for
hunting expeditions and storing furs. A Russian presence in
the Aleutians and on Unalaska Island began to appear in the
1770s, but the first known permanent settlement was founded
on Kodiak Island in 1784 by the enterprising merchant
Grigory Ivanovich Shelikhov. The hardy, ambitious, and
resourceful Shelikhov, who was perhaps the most farsighted
Siberian merchant of his day, became an early advocate of
extending Russian enterprise as far south as California.

The Russian foothold in Alaska remained undisturbed by other
Europeans for several decades. In the minds of Europeans and
American colonists of the 18th century, Alaska was barely
known—at most, it was little more than a place name for a
remote and forbidding land. From the late 1760s on, however,
the governments of Spain and Great Britain, both with claims
to the North American mainland, became concerned about
Russia’s presence in the North Pacific and, later, its
monopoly of the fur trade. Spain advanced its territorial
claims by sending naval expeditions as far north as
Unalaska, and by establishing a chain of missions in Upper
California between 1769 and 1776, from San Diego north to
San Francisco Bay. Great Britain promoted its cause by
sending Captain James Cook to search for a Northwest
Passage; the Cook expedition visited the northern Pacific
coast and Unalaska, where they met the Russians in 1778. The
newly formed United States established a claim to the
northwest coast, in part as a result of merchant voyages
from Boston to the Columbia River of Oregon in 1787-88.

Despite the growing profits of the fur trade in the North
Pacific, the number of Russian trading companies in
operation at the end of the 18th century declined. The
diminishing animal populations in northern waters, the
losses of sailing vessels in Alaska storms, and the rising
costs of long voyages from the Siberian seaboard to keep the
American settlements supplied all combined to reduce the
number of trading companies and leave the field only to the
strongest. At Grigory Shelikhov’s death in 1795, his firm
dominated the trade. In a move of significance for all of
Russian America, Shelikhov’s widow, Mme. Natalia Shelikhova,
and a business partner combined with another competitor in
1797 to form the United American Company, which two years
later reorganized to become the Russian-American Company,
chartered by Tsar Paul I.

The Russian-American Company, like other European
joint-stock companies (Dutch East India Company, Hudson’s
Bay Company, Northwest Fur Company, British East and West
India Companies), was given tasks to perform that went
beyond the realm of trade. It was authorized to use the
coastal areas of North America south to 55° north latitude
(near Alaska’s current southern boundary) and to explore and
colonize unoccupied lands. It was also given the right to
exploit surface and mineral resources in the areas settled
by Russians. In effect, it became the "right arm" of the
Russian government in the American hemisphere. Members of
the Tsar’s family, the court nobility, and high officialdom
held shares in the Company, and it was understood that the
Company would henceforth control all Russian exploration,
trade, and settlement in North America. Shelikhov’s dream of
turning the North Pacific into an "inland sea" of the
Russian Empire was now under way.

The next step in the continuing expansion along the
Northwest Coast of America was the establishment of the
Company’s permanent headquarters on the island of Sitka in
1808, a settlement the Russians named Novo-Arkhangel’sk.
From here, over the next few years, the Russians established
relations with the Spanish in California, set up a base for
exploring the California coast, and then founded a colony
north of San Francisco as a fur and agricultural supply
post.

In 1791 Shelikhov sent Alexandr Andreyevich Baranov
to Alaska as his trusted assistant to manage his trading
company’s affairs. Baranov’s success earned him the role of
first manager-in-chief of the Russian-American Company at
its founding in 1799, a post he filled until a few months
before his death in 1818. From his headquarters at Novo-Arkhangel’sk,
Baranov, with the help of his able assistant, Ivan
Alexandrovich Kuskov, supervised the Company’s growing
enterprises in Alaska, and those as far afield as California
and even Hawaii. A man of enormous talent, courage, and
stamina, who was both admired and feared by Russians,
natives, and foreigners alike, Baranov was the main
architect of Russia’s southward expansion.

Worried by the dwindling otter catch in Alaskan waters,
Baranov dispatched an exploratory hunting expedition to
California in 1803 in a joint venture with an American sea
captain, Joseph O’Cain. Sailing as far south as San Diego
and Baja California, the voyagers found the otter to be
plentiful, which ensured that the sea otter would remain the
Company’s most profitable trade item, even if the quality of
the fur was not as high as that of the Alaskan otter.

The other nagging problem that drove the Russians south was
the persistent difficulty in keeping the new settlements in
the North Pacific supplied with adequate provisions to feed
their colonists. The harsh physical environment of Alaska
and the lack of familiarity with crop and stock raising
among the Kodiak and Aleutian Islanders, on whom the
Russians relied for labor, worked against their meager
attempts at agriculture. Even the efforts of Russian
settlers to grow garden produce and to obtain seed were
disappointing. The winter of 1805-06 was climactic. The
weather was unusually severe, and no supply ships arrived
from Siberia for many months. The few staples on hand at
Sitka were rationed but soon gave out, and the lean,
ill-nourishing diet the settlers had to live on led to
malnutrition, scurvy, and death. Upon this dismal scene
arrived a high-ranking company official from St. Petersburg
to inspect the colony. Nikolai Petrovich Rezanov, imperial
chamberlain and son-in-law of Grigory Shelikhov, was
appalled at what he saw and reported the colonial
territories to be in a "disastrous situation."

So moved was Rezanov by the misery of the colonists that he
purchased a vessel from Americans in Alaska and sailed to
San Francisco Bay early in 1806 to purchase grain and, if
possible, to establish trade relations with the Spanish in
Upper California on a continuing basis. On his arrival,
Rezanov boldly ignored the fact that all California ports
were officially closed to trade with foreigners. He was at
once ordered to anchor. The commandant of the Spanish
presidio, Don José Dario Argüello, was away, so Rezanov was
met by his son, Don Luís Antonio Argüello, and by several
Catholic missionaries, all of whom were favorably impressed
by Rezanov’s credentials, guns, and good manners. Soon
Rezanov was cordially received at the Presidio by the family
of the Spanish commandant.

During the next few weeks, the persuasive Rezanov
successfully carried out his goal of trading Russian-made
utensils and tools for wheat. With the return of Commandant
Argüello to the Presidio, Rezanov was able to gain support
for permission to trade with Spanish California, which was
referred to Madrid for approval. Rezanov’s cause was further
promoted by his romance with the commandant’s daughter, Doña
Concepción Argüello, which led to a marriage proposal, and
its acceptance, on the eve of his departure.

Returning to Sitka with provisions and news of a possible
trade agreement with Spanish California, Rezanov urged
Baranov to make use of "the one unoccupied stretch" of
California coastline as an agricultural and hunting base for
the settlements in Russian Alaska. Then he set out on his
return trip to St. Petersburg, traveling via Kamchatka and
Siberia, to report to the Tsar and the Company’s home
office. On the way, weakened by fever, Rezanov fell from his
horse and died of injuries a few days later, on March 1,
1807. It was a year or two before Doña Concepción knew of
his fate. But, in Alaska, Baranov and Russian-American
Company officials hurried to act on Rezanov’s advice.

In 1803, 1806 and 1808 Baranov had appointed
Timofei Tarakanov, a talented promyshlennik, to lead large
Native Alaskan hunting parties to California. Between 1808
and 1811, Baranov sent his deputy Kuskov on a series of
expeditions to reconnoiter possible settlement sites in "New
Albion," a name used by the Russians after Sir Francis
Drake’s designation of California. At Bodega Bay, called
Rumiantsev Bay by the Russians, on the Sonoma Coast north of
San Francisco Bay, Kuskov established a temporary base and
set about exploring the surrounding territory. He examined
several sites, and in 1811 selected a cove and promontory up
the coast from Bodega Bay as the best location for the
colony. Although it lacked the deep-water anchorage the
Russians enjoyed in Bodega’s outer bay, the proposed site
had overall advantages in soil, timber, water supply, and
pasturage. In addition, its relative inaccessibility from
Spanish-occupied territory gave it an advantage in terms of
defense. Kuskov submitted his recommendations to Baranov,
and preparations began for founding a settlement.

In March 1812, with orders to build and administer the
settlement, Kuskov returned to the Sonoma Coast. With him
came twenty-five Russians, many of them craftsmen, and
eighty Aleuts. These Native Alaskans brought forty baidarkas,
the swift, maneuverable skin kayaks used for hunting and a
few larger skin boats, baidaras, for transport. Kuskov’s
assignment was not an unfamiliar one. He had previously
administered settlements in Alaska and had built Novo-Arkhangel’sk
on Sitka Island after local Indians destroyed the Company
fortress in 1802. Construction at the California site began
at once. Some of the craftsmen with Kuskov may have worked
on reconstructing the Sitka settlement. The structures which
rose on the bluff of the new colony took on lines similar to
those of Novo-Arkhangel’sk, as the workmen followed models
of the traditional stockade, blockhouses, and log buildings
found in Siberia and on Sitka.

On August 30, 1812 (in the old style Russian calendar), the
name-day of Tsar Alexander I, the Russians held a special
religious service at the colony, marking the completion of
the stockade. The stockade was built of redwood, much in the
same configuration as seen today. Two blockhouses with
cannon ports were constructed at the northwest and southeast
corners of the stockade. The northwest blockhouse had seven
sides and the southeast one had eight, each structure being
two stories high. Between twelve and forty cannons were
placed within the stockade and blockhouses, the number
varying in the different accounts of the site written over
the years. Sentries bearing flintlock muskets stood guard in
each blockhouse, but although it was fortified, the
settlement served as a commercial, not a military outpost.
Flagstaffs were first erected in the center of the stockade
and outside it on the bluff, each bearing the flag of the
Russian-American Company, with the imperial double-headed
eagle as its insignia. The settlement was given the name
"Ross" most likely to highlight poetically its connection
with Imperial Russia (Rossiia). Ross had other early names
as well: the Russians often described the outpost as "Ross
Colony," "Ross Settlement," and "Ross Fortress," and Company
officials called it the "Ross Office." Its current name,
"Fort Ross," has been used by Americans since the mid-19th
century.

By 1820 the stockade interior contained the house of the
manager (now called the Kuskov House), the quarters of other
officials, barracks for the Russian employees, and various
storehouses and lesser structures. Some buildings had two
stories. The manager’s house had glass windows and was
comfortably furnished. The chapel was added about 1825,
replacing a small bell tower on the same site. A well inside
the stockade provided the colonists with fresh water in case
of emergency. In 1832 an anonymous Bostonian who visited
Ross recorded his description of the stockade and manager’s
residence: The Presidio is formed by the houses fronting
inwards, making a large square, surrounded by a high fence.
The Governor’s house stands at the head, and the remainder
of the square is formed by the chapel, magazine, and
dwelling houses. The buildings are from 15 to 20 feet high,
built of large timbers, and have a weather-beaten
appearance.

Outside the stockade, a windmill, cattle yard, bakery,
threshing floor, and cemetery, along with farm buildings and
bath houses, appeared within five years. There were
vegetable gardens and an orchard. In later years there were
two windmills, two threshing floors, several bathhouses and
assorted other structures described in the 1841 Russian
Inventory for Sutter. Along the cove, at the mouth of the
stream below the stockade, were located a shipyard, forge,
tannery, boathouse and storage shed for baidaras and
baidarkas.

After 1820 many Russians chose to live outside the stockade.
There were also the dwellings of the local Kashaya Indians,
on whose ancestral land the outpost was built, and who
worked for the Russians. The Native Alaskans who had come
with Kuskov, generally designated by the Russians as Aleuts,
lived outside the fort as well. Auguste Bernard Duhaut-Cilly,
visiting from France in 1828, noted a population of about
sixty Russians, eighty "Kodiaks," and about eighty Indians,
all living in relative harmony.

Records show that after 1812 there were from
twenty-five to one hundred Russians and from fifty to one
hundred twenty-five Native Alaskans at the settlement at any
given time. The number of the Kashaya, who came to work as
day laborers, varied with the seasons. Records indicate the
presence of only a few Russian women in the colony (the most
prominent of whom was the wife of the last manager); "creole"
and Alaskan women were somewhat more numerous. However,
during the life of the colony, a number of Russians and
Alaskan natives married California Indian women—Kashaya,
Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo—with the consent of tribal and
Company authorities. The children at the settlement, who
made up about a third of the residents by the mid-1830s,
were almost all considered as "Creoles," born of these
ethnically mixed unions.

Everyone in the vicinity of Fort Ross labored for the
Russian-American Company. The organization and operation of
the colony followed the same general pattern as in the
Company’s Alaskan settlements. The Ross colony, as in
Alaska, was headed by a manager. He was paid a salary and
given living quarters, and, although he also had servants,
he worked as hard as any of the colonists, even finding time
to tend a garden to add to the food supply. Kuskov, the
first manager, was a particularly avid gardener, growing
cabbage and beets for pickling, with enough produce
harvested for shipments to be sent to Sitka for distribution
in Alaska. The Ross settlement had five managers during its
existence—Kuskov served from 1812 to 1821, Karl Ivanovich
Schmidt from 1821 to 1824, Pavel [Paul] Ivanovich Shelikhov
from 1825 to 1830, Peter Stepanovich Kostromitinov from 1830
to 1838, and Alexander Gavrilovich Rotchev from 1838 to
1841.

The rest of the Russian colonists were drawn from various
parts of the Russian Empire. Besides prikashchiki, who were
the administrative assistants and work supervisors, some of
the colonists were artisans—carpenters, blacksmiths,
coopers, and those skilled in a trade. Many of the Russians
were promyshlenniki (Kuskov used the term promyshlennye in
his census of 1821): handymen, laborers, hunters, and
occasional seamen in the Company service. Before 1820, such
workers were hired to work on a share-of-the-catch basis;
after that time they were paid a salary, signing on for a
seven-year term and agreeing to serve their manager, to
resist trading with the natives or foreigners for personal
gain, and to avoid vice, particularly drunkenness. Their
salary was paid in Company scrip, and out of this they had
to buy their clothes and food; a portion of meat and flour
was allotted to them on a regular basis. In 1832, the 72
salaried employees at Fort Ross averaged an annual income of
360 rubles apiece¾ not a subsistence wage. The Aleuts, with
their "passion" for hunting sea otter, were paid according
to the number of otters they caught. They were furnished
waterproof parkas and boots for the hunt and sea lion skins
with which to repair their baidarkas, which could stand the
battering of the sea for only about three months before
needing to be mended.

Much of the wear and tear on the baidarkas took place in the
waters off the Farallon Islands, some 30 miles west of San
Francisco, where the Russians, until about 1830, maintained
their chief hunting base. Here, in their hunting group, or
artel, up to ten Aleuts and Indians under a Russian foreman
lived in crude earthen huts on the rocky slopes and
regularly embarked upon harpooning forays on shore and sea.
They processed their catch at this base camp for periodic
shipment to the mainland—bundles of seal and sea otter
pelts, bird meat, eggs and feathers, resilient sea lion skin
and sinew, salted and dried sea lion meat, and blubber
stored in small kegs, used both for food and as lamp oil.
Members of the artel and their families were rotated between
Fort Ross and the Farallones, depending on the size of the
sea mammal herds during the hunting season.

When Kuskov selected the settlement site for Ross on Kashaya
territory in 1811, he was uncertain about relations with the
Indians. Such concerns proved groundless. Unlike relations
between the Indians and other foreigners in California,
those between the Russians and the Kashaya were remarkably
free of tension and strife. On the whole, the Russians
appear to have treated the Kashaya fairly. The Indians
employed at the settlement were paid in flour, meat, and
clothing (either daily or monthly); lodging was provided,
and their labor was at first voluntary, although relations
deteriorated later. The coastal Indians regarded the
Russians as far more desirable neighbors than the Spaniards,
and they viewed the Russian presence as a safeguard against
the Spanish (or Mexicans) and against other Indians entering
their territory.

The Kashaya called the foreigners associated with the
Russian colony the "Undersea People," whereas they referred
to themselves as the "People From the Top of the Land."
Originally, the land made available to the Russians by the
Indians was accompanied by an exchange of gifts, mainly
tools and trinkets, and professions of friendship. As the
settlement grew, the Russians, who were amply aware of
Spanish claims to all territory north of San Francisco,
prudently decided to formalize their title. Consequently,
Chief Manager Baranov sent Captain Leontii Andreianovich
Hagemeister to the Sonoma Coast to document the transfer. A
deed "releasing land to the Company" was drawn up and agreed
upon in 1817 by the local Indian chiefs (Chu-gu-an, Amat-tan,
and Gem-le-le), but it was signed only by the Russians
present—Hagemeister and six other officials. It stated that
"the chiefs are very satisfied with the occupation of this
place by the Russians" and that "they now live in security
from other Indians who used to attack them." A copy of the
agreement, the only one known to have been executed between
Indians and Europeans in California, was dispatched to
Russia. Chief Chu-gu-an was presented a silver medal
inscribed with the words "Allies of Russia."

The three-way culture of Native Californians, Native
Alaskans, and Russians at Fort Ross was chiefly one of
genuine cooperation, which some attribute to the religious
values that had been instilled earlier in the Russians and
Aleuts, by clergymen in Alaskan Russian America. At Fort
Ross many of the Kashaya acquired a good understanding of
the Russian language, and a number of Russian words found
their way into the Kashaya vocabulary. It is also known that
some Kashaya wives and children accompanied their
promyshlennik husbands and fathers north to Alaska and even
to Russia after the sale of the colony in 1841.

Although no one left a detailed account of daily life in the
colony, the observations of both residents and visitors
point to a busy if simple existence. In addition to hunting
sea mammals and birds, parties fished for salmon, sea perch,
and sea bass, and harvested local shellfish for the
settlement’s larder. Sturgeon were caught in the Russian
River. Farming and ranching consumed many hours of the
colonists’ time, with even some of the Aleuts and Indians
joining in to handle planting, cultivating, herding,
logging, and construction chores. At the sheds along the
cove, artisans got to work making furniture, barrels, plows,
and other hardware, and later even ships and boats. The
blacksmith’s anvil rang with the hammering of metal, as
countless articles needed for trade and for operating the
colony were fashioned by the skilled workers. Not all was
hard work for the employees, however, for at Ross, as in
Alaska and in the motherland, various holidays were
observed. These occasions were cause for celebrations, which
sometimes featured gun and rifle practice, followed by a
feast of fresh meat obtained by slaughtering a bull from the
settlement’s herd of cattle. All in all, everyday life was
active and peaceful.

Not once was the settlement threatened by outside attack.
The climate was mild yet invigorating, and the beauty of the
surroundings imparted a sense of well-being recorded by many
who were there. Manager Rotchev was to look back
nostalgically at the time spent in this "enchanting land" as
the "best years" of his life.

Closely bound to the lives of the colonists was their
religion. The Russians brought with them their Eastern
Orthodox Christianity as they had to Siberia and Alaska. In
the early 1820s, as reported by the Company’s chief manager,
"The Russian, Creole, and Aleut employees at Ross settlement
expressed their intention to build at their own expense a
chapel dedicated to St. Nicholas." The goal was helped along
in 1823-24 when the officers and crews of three Russian Navy
ships, on visit to San Francisco Bay, donated a "rather
considerable sum" to the proposed chapel, and, soon
thereafter, the Company’s home office ordered four icons to
be sent from Russia for placement in the building.

Presumably, Paul Shelikhov, the settlement manager at that
time, deserves credit for supervising the chapel’s
construction, for the first known reference to the "newly
built" chapel, the first Orthodox structure established in
the New World south of Alaska, came in 1828 from a French
visitor, Duhaut-Cilly. The chapel, however, was never
consecrated as a church because of the colony’s tenuous
legality and the fact that no clergyman was ever permanently
assigned. Nevertheless, the colonists conducted prayer
meetings in the chapel and designated a sexton for its
upkeep. In later years they hosted at least two priests who
visited Ross and its chapel.

In the summer of 1836, Father Ioann Veniaminov spent about
five weeks at the settlement. While there he preached,
instructed, and conducted weddings, confessions, communion
services, baptisms, burials, and prayer services. He also
held services for the Aleuts (in translation), consecrated
the waters of Fort Ross Creek, and led a festive procession
around the stockade exterior. According to Father
Veniaminov’s detailed journal, about 15 per cent of the
settlement’s population, then numbering two hundred and
sixty, consisted of Indians baptized in the Eastern Orthodox
faith; among the residents were also a few who were Lutheran
and Catholic. The priest also described his visit to the
missions of the San Francisco Bay area and the cordial
relations he was able to establish with the Mexicans. In
later years, Father Veniaminov became Bishop of Alaska and,
subsequently, Metropolitan of Moscow, the senior bishop of
the Russian Empire; in 1980, he was canonized as Saint
Innokenty of Alaska.

As early as 1816, the sea otter catch showed signs
of decline, and, by 1820 or so, attention was increasingly
given to agriculture and stock raising. But the initial
intention of Company officials that the Ross settlement
become an important food base for Alaska as well as for the
Siberian seaboard (Kamchatka and Okhotsk) was not to be
fulfilled. The reasons were many. The arable land around the
settlement was limited and relatively infertile. Coastal
fogs and encroaching wild oats often caused poor wheat
harvest. Gophers, mice, and blackbirds damaged the tilled
fields and adversely affected harvests. Despite some
attempts at mechanization and scientific farming, introduced
by Moscow-trained agronomist Yegor Leontievich Chernykh, the
colonists had inadequate knowledge of crop rotation,
fertilization, and other farming techniques, and for the
most part were unable to reap even marginal yields of grain.
Better results were often gleaned from the small-scale plots
of wheat and barley under private, individual cultivation.
Harvests from private holdings actually surpassed those from
the Company’s fields during the tenure of Kuskov’s
successor, Karl Schmidt, in the early 1820s. Most
long-lasting of the first horticultural efforts at Ross were
the Russian experiments with fruit trees. The first peach
tree, brought from San Francisco, was planted in 1814, and
in 1817-18, Captain Hagemeister introduced grape stock
brought from Peru and more peach trees from Monterey.
Eventually the Russian orchard, located on the hillside less
than a mile from Ross, included apples, peaches, grapes,
cherries, and several types of pear. This orchard, which is
still maintained today, contains several fruit-bearing trees
that were possibly planted over a century and a half ago.

Agriculture at Fort Ross peaked in the early 1830s, but it
fell far short of expectations. This disappointment
gradually led Company officials to experiment with
agriculture inland and to the south. They reasoned that
establishing farms in more sheltered areas might not only
raise the colony’s overall productivity but would serve as a
buffer between the Russian coastal holdings and the Mexican
and American settlers advancing from the south. Between 1833
and 1841, the Russians maintained three such ranches. The
farthest ranch from Ross was that founded by the agronomist
Yegor Chernykh. Chernykh had been sent by the Company to
California to improve crop production on the Sonoma Coast

and, soon after his arrival in 1836, he recommended
extending the colony’s farming activities farther inland. He
established his ranch about ten miles from the coast, in a
small valley watered by a wooded stream (Purrington Creek,
between Occidental and Graton). There he erected barracks
and five other structures, and grew vegetables, fruit,
wheat, and other grains. Chernykh also developed a large
vineyard, introducing what has since become a major crop in
the area.

Another ranch was located on the south side of the Russian
River near its mouth, east of today’s State Highway One
bridge over the river. The presumed founder was Peter
Kostromitinov. By 1841, this farmstead consisted of one
hundred acres and produced mainly wheat. In addition to a
ranch house, the property contained a barracks, granary,
threshing and winnowing floors, and a house for Indian
laborers. It also had a kitchen, bath house, corrals, and a
boat landing for river crossings. The ranch of Vasily
Khlebnikov, a Company employee, was located several miles
inland, east of Bodega Bay in the upper Salmon Creek valley.
The largest of the three ranches, it had the same types of
buildings as on the Kostromitinov Ranch, as well as a
bakery, forge, and tobacco shed. Here the Russians used
adobe brick in building the main house. A sizable amount of
land was allotted to wheat, corn, beans, and tobacco. In
1841 the ranch site was chosen to host a two-day birthday
celebration for Yelena (Helena) Pavlovna Rotcheva, the wife
of the last manager. The event was attended by guests from
the Mexican community at Sonoma, foreign visitors, and
Russians from Fort Ross. The festivities featured music and
dancing which continued for almost forty-eight hours.

Although the Russians never made it their major enterprise,
stock raising was more consistently successful than growing
crops, and in time it became an integral part of the
economy. Breeding stock, first obtained from the Spanish,
produced several thousand head of cattle, horses, mules, and
sheep, and enabled substantial shipments of wool, tallow,
hides, salt beef, and butter to be sent to Alaska, as well
as other destinations, for marketing. Moreover, sheep and
cattle provided raw materials for clothing and a variety of
household goods, much of which was used in trading. In the
early 1820s, about 1,800 pounds of wool were produced
annually, more than enough to cover the needs of the colony
and to export to the California missions and elsewhere.
Although wool blankets and saddle-cloths were woven at Fort
Ross, efforts to expand woolen manufacturing proved
unsuccessful because of the lack of skilled workers. From
tallow the Russians made candles, with wicks of flax or
rush, and they also used animal fat combined with oakwood
ashes, seashell lime and water to make soap. Lanterns,
combs, and powder horns were fashioned from the horns of
oxen. Shoe soles and boot uppers were made from hides. In
the last years of the colony 1,700 head of cattle, 940
horses and mules, and 900 sheep were in Russian hands, and
were described by the French observer, Eugène Duflot de
Mofras, as "in prime condition and unquestionably the finest
in California."

The forests surrounding the Russian settlement
supplied the raw materials for housing, shipbuilding, and
other timber products. The colonists made barrels from
redwood at the cooperage, and navigational equipment from
the harder wood of bay trees. They boiled pitch from fir and
pine trees, and processed tannic acid from the bark of the
tan oak tree. They sawed redwood beams, 21 feet long and in
various widths, and even prefabricated sections of housing,
all of which sold well on the California market.

Because of the abundance of timber, Company officials held
high hope for the development of shipbuilding at Ross,
primarily as a means of improving trans-Pacific trade and
communication. Baranov, in particular, encouraged the
enterprise and in 1817 sent a shipwright from Sitka, Vasily
Grudinin, to supervise the project. In eight years’ time,
three brigs and a schooner were built at the cove, ranging
in size from 160 to 200 tons, and in cost from 20,000 to
60,000 rubles each ($4,000 to $12,000). In the end, however,
shipbuilding was abandoned, as Company Agent Kiril
Timofeyevich Khlebnikov reported, because the oak used in
construction was " . . freshly cut and the wood used while
still unseasoned, and by the time the ship was launched the
rot had set in. After three or four years the changes in
climate caused the rot to increase in all the main parts of
the ship, and there was no way to repair it." As a
consequence, the larger vessels could only be used for
coastal trade from Monterey to Alaska, and occasionally for
a voyage to Hawaii or Okhotsk. Nevertheless, the shipyard at
Ross was the first of any size to operate in California, and
many of the smaller boats constructed there found a ready
market among the Californios, as the Spanish-Mexican
settlers were called, of the San Francisco Bay area.

Other commercial activities were more consistently
successful, particularly tanning, milling, brickmaking,
blacksmithing and foundry work. At the tannery at the mouth
of Fort Ross Creek, working with six redwood vats, an Aleut
master tanner dressed, tanned, and fashioned hides and skins
into shoes, boots, and other leather goods. By the late
1820s between 70 and 90 tanned hides were shipped to Sitka
each year. In 1814, the first known wind-powered flour mill
in California was built on a knoll north of the stockade;
another windmill, added some time later, was able to grind
over 30 bushels of grain a day. A third mill was hand and
animal-powered. After the flour was ground, it was stored,
exported, or used for baking in one of the fort’s kitchens.
Two mill-driven machines were used to crush tan-oak bark for
the tannery. A good-quality clay was found nearby, which led
to the manufacture of bricks; their production and storage
were moved to Bodega in 1832.

Much has been written about the enmity and suspicion that
existed between the Russian and the Spanish-Mexican
authorities in California, but their disagreements have been
overstated. The Spanish government officially forbade its
subjects from trading with foreigners. Commercial exchanges,
however, did take place between the Spanish and the Russians
beginning with Rezanov’s visit, and, in the early days of
Ross, the Californios supplied the Russians with their first
wheat, fruit trees, cattle, and horses. Because the
Californios undertook almost no manufacturing of their own,
they had considerable demand for farm implements and
household wares. As the Russian colony grew, it was soon
able to fulfill some of this demand. There was hardly a
useful item of wood, metal, or leather that the
promyshlenniki and artisans did not produce, and soon the
Russians sold ploughs, axes, nails, wheels, metal cookware
and longboats to their neighbors in exchange for grain,
salt, and other raw materials.

After Mexico won her independence from Spain in 1821,
foreign trade was no longer against the law. Trade between
the Californios and the Russians continued, but now there
was more competition from the Americans and British.
Competition lowered the price of Russian goods and increased
the price of California produce. Trade relations were
further hampered by the Mexican imposition of new anchorage
fees on all foreign vessels entering California ports. One
compensation for the Russians, however, was their control of
Bodega Bay, their main shipping port. Here they had
established storage and supply facilities as well as landing
rights, all made available to foreign vessels. Here some
supplies were warehoused and others taken to Fort Ross by
baidara and baidarka or by horseback. The journey between
the port facilities at Bodega Bay and Fort Ross usually took
five hours, whether by land or by sea. With this port of
entry and with their variety of goods for sale, the Russians
were able to continue trading with the Californios, as
evidenced, for example, by the records of the sale of
gunpowder and uniforms, procured or produced by the
Russians, to General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, on the
nearby Mexican frontier.

RUSSIAN CONTACT IN CALIFORNIA WAS NOT LIMITED TO THE SPANISH
AND MEXICAN SETTLERS. THE ROSS OFFICE ALSO TRADED WITH
AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN SHIPS VISITING THE CALIFORNIA COAST.
ALSO OF INTEREST WAS CONTACT IN 1833 WITH THE BONA VENTURA
BRIGADE, LED BY JOHN WORK AND MICHEL LAFRAMBOISE OF THE
HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY. THE BRIGADE, CONSISTING OF 163 PEOPLE,
WAS RELUCTANTLY GIVEN PERMISSION TO PASS BY FORT ROSS BY
MANAGER KOSTROMITINOV. THE GROUP CAMPED FIVE MILES UP THE
COAST BEYOND FORT ROSS.

A number of explorers, scientists, artists, and men
of letters from Imperial Russia used Ross as a base of
operation while pursuing their investigations and recording
their findings. Others used Russian ships in San Francisco
Bay as springboards for exploration, travel, and scientific
research. Some of these men were on expeditions sponsored by
the Russian government or by private initiative; others were
Company employees with a penchant for observation, who
recorded what they saw around them. Altogether, their
pioneering work in the geography, botany, zoology,
entomology, geology, meteorology, and ethnology of the
region contributed information and insight valuable to the
present day.

The first of these observers, the physician and biologist
Georg Heinrich von Langsdorff, accompanied Rezanov to
California in 1806. Langsdorff was a correspondent member of
the Imperial Academy of Sciences, and the memoirs of his
stay present a classic account of early Spanish California.
His sketches of California Indians and their artifacts are
among the earliest portraits of native life to have
survived.

In 1808 Ivan Kuskov and his crew explored Bodega Bay; soon
thereafter Kuskov traveled 45 miles up the Russian River
(which he named the Slavianka) in search of a site suitable
for settlement. Later he sent parties of Native Alaskans on
expeditions up the coastline as far north as Humboldt and
Trinidad Bays. It was Manager-in-Chief Baranov who decided
to rename Bodega Bay Rumiantsev Bay in honor of Count
Nikolai Petrovich Rumiantsev, Russian Foreign Minister and a
wealthy patron of the Russian-American Company. By 1818,
Kuskov’s promyshlenniki had traveled almost 70 miles up the
Sacramento River; later they ascended the American River
above what is now Sutter’s Fort.

In 1816, Captain Otto von Kotzebue headed a voyage around
the world. Privately chartered by Count Rumiantsev, the ship
brought the naturalist Adelbert von Chamisso, the artist
Louis Andreyevich Choris, and the entomologist-zoologist
Johann Friedrich Eschscholtz to California. During their
stay in the San Francisco area, Chamisso collected the
California poppy and gave it the botanical name Eschscholzia
californica, after his friend and the land that they were
investigating. On a return trip to California with Kotzebue
in 1824, Eschscholtz made a large insect collection,
recorded the geology of the area, and carefully described
such mammals as bears, skunks, deer, and "mountain goats,"
with "long hair hanging from their legs, and short, rather
straight horns." Kotzebue left detailed memoirs of his
California travels on both occasions; he provides, for
example, the first mention of the geysers of Sonoma County,
confusing them with the smoke of Indian campfires.

In 1818, Captain Vasily Nikolaevich Golovnin, of the Russian
Navy, visited northern California and included stops at Fort
Ross and Bodega Bay. His memoirs describe the warm welcome
given him by the Miwok chiefs at Bodega Bay, as well as many
observations of Indian life and customs, including the
autumn grass fires intentionally set to encourage the growth
of seeds and grains. Golovnin made a useful navigator’s map
of the Bodega Bay area, with precise water depths and
topographical features included. On board his ship was the
young artist Mikhail Tikhonovich Tikhanov, who made a series
of five color sketches of California Indians while ashore at
Bodega Bay. In the mid-1820s, another Russian naval officer,
Lieutenant Dmitry Irinarkhovich Zavalishin, visited San
Francisco Bay. In an extensive literary portrait of the
Spanish population and local geography he wrote that he
traveled overland to Fort Ross, Santa Cruz and east to the
Calaveras-Mariposa area.

During the early 1830s, Baron Ferdinand Petrovich von
Wrangell, while manager-in-chief of the Russian-American
Company, strongly encouraged the scientific study of the
wildlife and geography of North America. In 1833 on a
journey to evaluate the possibilities of extending the
Russian settlement farther inland, he personally conducted
the first anthropological study of the Indian population of
the Russian River area and the Santa Rosa plain. Along with
his own written observations on the natural habitat and
Indian customs Wrangell arranged to have the Imperial
Academy of Sciences publish a comprehensive anthropological
account of California Indians written by Manager Peter
Kostromitinov. Also invaluable today are the first
systematic weather records kept in California, compiled by
Yegor Chernykh between 1837 and 1840. These documented
temperature, sky cover, air pressure, precipitation and wind
conditions at Ross and at his ranch ten miles inland.

Among the later visitors to Ross was the naturalist and
artist, Ilya Gavrilovich Voznesenskii. A trained scientist
and competent graphic artist, Voznesenskii was sent by the
Imperial Academy of Sciences to explore and investigate
Russian America. Many important sketches of the Ross
Settlement and its surrounding area come from Voznesenskii’s
hand, the result of a year-long visit to Northern
California. His avid interest in California’s flora and
fauna, as well as Indian life, took him far afield by foot,
boat, and horseback.

In May 1841, Chernykh and Voznesenskii joined forces to map
and name the tributaries of the Russian River as far north
as the Healdsburg area. Shortly afterward they made the
first recorded ascent of Mt. St. Helena. A metal plaque, in
Russian and Spanish, was made in advance, and the explorers
installed it on the north summit to mark their feat. In the
1850s the plaque was removed, but a facsimile was made for
the Fort Ross centennial in 1912 to replace it; this marker
remains atop Mt. St. Helena. Voznesenskii also traveled up
the Sacramento River to visit the Swiss émigré, Captain
Johann (John) Augustus Sutter, at his ranch and fort, New
Helvetia. He rode up California’s central valley to explore
the volcanic Sutter Buttes with his host, who would soon
play a major role in the fate of Fort Ross.

On these and other expeditions, Voznesenskii was able to
gather an ethnographically invaluable collection of
California Indian artifacts. These include ornaments,
weapons, garments and baskets that can be seen today at the
Museum of Ethnography, St. Petersburg, Russia. Many of these
objects are the sole surviving items of their kind.
Voznesenskii’s travel notes tell of his many local
excursions, from the islands of San Francisco Bay to the
forests of the Mendocino Coast. They contain observations of
the lives of Californians, from the children at Fort Ross to
the foreign merchants at Yerba Buena (San Francisco).

By 1839, for all the diversity of activity at Fort Ross,
officials of the Russian-American Company had decided to
abandon the colony. The California sea otter population had
been largely depleted by the mid-1830s, and the Russian
shift of emphasis from hunting to farming and stock raising,
to produce large quantities of grain, beef, and dairy
products, did not match expectations. Moreover, the
experiment in shipbuilding, while impressive in the short
run, proved defective over time, and trade in manufactured
goods did not return enough profit to offset deficits.

At the same time, the Mexican government’s active
encouragement of new settlers into the area, as well as a
growing influx of Americans, posed a looming challenge to
Russian claims over territory, which neither the Imperial
government in distant St. Petersburg nor the
Russian-American Company was able to meet. A last effort to
avert a Russian withdrawal came in 1836 when Baron von
Wrangell journeyed from Sitka to Mexico City to seek an
improvement in relations with the new Mexican Republic. He
also sought Mexico’s formal recognition of the legality of
Russia’s claim to Fort Ross, previously denied by both Spain
and Mexico. The Mexicans were willing to yield on this
issue, but only in return for Russia’s diplomatic
recognition of their own national independence as a
republic. However, Tsar Nicholas I, an unwavering defender
of absolute monarchy and a foe of revolutionary change,
rejected the condition, and so ended any chance of a
favorable resolution of the contested issue of the
"legitimacy" of the Russian colony. In April 1839, the Tsar
approved of the Company’s plan to liquidate the settlement,
and shortly thereafter the Company offered all of its
California holdings for sale.

The man charged with selling the colony and its assets was
Alexander Rotchev, who had arrived at Fort Ross in mid-1836,
on a temporary assignment. Joining him later were his wife,
Helena, the Princess Gagarina, and their three children. A
prominent writer and literary translator conversant in
several languages, the energetic and talented Rotchev,
together with his attractive wife, soon lent a new tone to
life in the frontier community, giving it vigor, intensity,
and sophistication in its last few years. Named to succeed
Kostromitinov as manager of the colony in late 1838, Rotchev
was quick to grasp the problems facing the distant colonial
outpost and proved himself to be a resourceful administrator
and diplomat. Although he personally opposed the decision to
sell the colony, he faithfully carried out his orders, ably
conducting the intricate negotiations that led to the sale
of the Company’s assets in California.

Rotchev first approached the Hudson’s Bay Company regarding
the purchase, but the British turned down the offer in 1840.
He then made overtures to France through the French military
attaché in Mexico City, Eugène Duflot de Mofras. Duflot made
an extensive visit to Ross to investigate the area
first-hand, but he, too, declined to put forth a bid, on the
grounds that he lacked authority in such matters. The
Russian-American Company then ordered Rotchev to offer the
outpost to Mexico. Both the Mexican Government and General
Vallejo of Sonoma rejected the Russian terms, partly because
Mexico already considered Fort Ross as legally its own, and
possibly because they hoped that the Russians would simply
abandon the outpost.

Rotchev then approached Captain Sutter at his ranch in the
Sacramento Valley, and in late 1841 Sutter agreed to buy the
Russian-American Company’s assets. This included all the
buildings, livestock, and implements, but not the land
itself, which was still claimed by Mexico. The contract
stipulated that Sutter pay the Company the equivalent of
$30,000 in installments, in both cash and produce. However,
a separate, unofficial deed, signed by Rotchev one day
earlier than the day on which Sutter, a Mexican citizen,
signed the official contract, transferred to the new owner a
stretch of land extending from Cape Mendocino to Point Reyes
and inland for 12 miles. (This deed did not surface publicly
until 1857 and then caused considerable legal controversy.)

On January 1, 1842, Rotchev and about one hundred colonists
sailed from Bodega Bay on the last Russian ship bound for
Sitka. After 30 years, the flag of the Russian-American
Company was lowered at Fort Ross, and the Russian epoch in
the history of California came to a close.

The venture of the Russian-American Company into California
was short-lived. However, the memory of it has lingered
long, preserved in the buildings and the stockade at Fort
Ross, both original and restored, in the place names of
scattered creeks and coves along the northern coast and of
the largest river in Sonoma County, and in the vestiges of
Russian and Native Alaskan influence on the Kashaya Pomo
language and culture. The Russians were the first to explore
and map parts of Northern California, and they were also the
first known Europeans to climb Mt. St. Helena.

The abandonment of Fort Ross was a harbinger of Russia’s
withdrawal from North America altogether. The
Russian-American Company’s profits continued to decline,
and, when the Company’s charter expired in 1862, it was
extended thereafter only provisionally. Meanwhile, Russia’s
preoccupation with developing its newly acquired Pacific
territories north of China was increasing, and the
prospective costs of continuing to maintain the outposts in
America, especially in the face of a growing British
presence, led Russia to sell its Alaskan holdings to the
United States Government in 1867, thus terminating a
century-long territorial presence in America. In retrospect,
the withdrawal from Fort Ross, Russia’s easternmost outpost,
signaled a turning point in the expansion of the Russian
Empire. As the world’s largest contiguous empire, Imperial
Russia chose to redirect its energies and consolidate itself
on only two continents instead of three.

AFTER 1842 AND THE ABANDONMENT OF COLONY ROSS ELEMENTS OF
RUSSIAN INTEREST IN CALIFORNIA CONTINUED. ALEXANDER ROTCHEV,
THE LAST MANAGER OF ROSS, RETURNED DURING THE GOLD RUSH IN
1851-1852. HE OBTAINED A PATENT FOR CALIFORNIA’S FIRST GOLD
WASHING MACHINE WHICH HE SET UP ON THE YUBA RIVER. PETER
KOSTROMITINOV, MANAGER OF ROSS FROM 1830 TO 1838, RETURNED
TO SAN FRANCISCO IN 1851 AS THE RUSSIAN-AMERICAN COMPANY
AGENT, AND IN 1852 HE BECAME RUSSIAN VICE CONSUL, A POSITION
HE HELD UNTIL 1862. COMMERCIAL INTERESTS ALSO CONTINUED IN
CALIFORNIA. THE KODIAK OFFICE OF THE ICE COMPANY WAS FORMED
IN 1851 TO CUT AND STORE ICE NEAR KODIAK AND SUPPLY IT TO
SAN FRANCISCO.

Fort Ross Conservancy, a
501(c)(3) and California State Park cooperating association,
connects people to the history and beauty of Fort Ross and Salt
Point State Parks.